A very merry Christmas for apps, smartphones and tablets

Two reports released today show that Santa Claus was busy leaving smartphones and tablets under the Christmas tree this holiday.

Flurry, a research firm that tracks mobile apps, said that a record number of smartphones and tablets were activated on Christmas Day, with their new owners immediately downloading new apps. On a typical day, an average of about 4 million devices are activated, but on Christmas, that number jumped to 17.4 million. Last Christmas, 6.8 million devices were turned on on Christmas day.

The new owners downloaded 328 million apps on Christmas, compared with about 155 million a day in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Tablets were the big winner on Christmas. Though it’s usually the other way around, on Christmas, slightly more tablets than smartphones — 51 percent versus 49 percent — were turned on. Not too surprisingly, the most popular were the iPad, the iPad mini and the Kindle HD Fire 7″ tablets.

Similarly, another report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that the number of ebook readers are growing while readers of old-fashioned print books are declining. Its survey estimates that, over the past year, the percentage of ebook readers ages 16 and up climbed from 16 percent to 23 percent. The percentage of print book readers, meanwhile, dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent.

The Pew report also said that, of November 2012, about a quarter of all Americans ages 16 and older own tablet computers such as iPads or Kindle Fires, up from 10 percent who owned tablets around the same time last year. In late 2012, 19 percent now own ebook reading devices such as Kindles and Nooks, compared with 10 percent last year.